Wes, his arm freshly pinned behind his back by one of the other larger boys, stilled as Hastings approached again. When the younger boy reached for Wes’s belt, bowing into his personal space, Wes headbutted him.
“Motherfucker!”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” sighed Donovan as if Hastings’s incompetence was as simple an inconvenience as running out of toilet paper in the washroom. Keeping a careful eye on Wes, Donovan reached forward and took Wes’s baton off of his belt. Then, with an agile flick of his wrist, Donovan rapped the baton against Wes’s face.
The snap of Wes’s nose breaking echoed through the apartment. He yelled out in agony, but the pain in his face and the immediate flow of blood over his mouth and chin only invigorated his rage. He tore away from the boys, ripping the sleeve of his police jacket down the seam. Like a madman, he swung recklessly at anything that moved, connecting once or twice with a jawline or a clenched abdomen. Franklin, who’d been cowering under the coffee table ever since Donovan and his cohorts had arrived, barked madly, baring his teeth like a demon from the pits of hell. Donovan aimed a kick at the dog, but Franklin snapped at Donovan’s boot, the gnash of his teeth an audible snap.
“Enough!” roared Donovan. At some point, one of his guys had managed to rip Wes’s duty belt off. It lay abandoned in a heap on the floor. Donovan leaned down, pried the handgun free, and pointed it at Wes. Immediately, Wes froze. “McAllen, do you know who the fuck I am?”
“Davenport,” said Wes in a lethal voice, and he hawked a mouthful of blood into Donovan’s face.
Donovan flinched, wiping the blood and spit from where it had landed on his cheek, then inched forward and pressed the barrel of the gun to Wes’s temple. “Don’t provoke the man with the weapon, McAllen.”
“If you fire that gun, you’re going to be in deep shit,” warned Wes, his voice thick.
“I’m sure my buddy at the force won’t mind,” responded Donovan, but he stepped back and twirled the gun around his finger like a lawless dueler in the Wild West. “You know him. Officer Wilson. He’s your boss, isn’t he?”
Wes remained quiet. He’d already assumed that certain officers in the local police force were corrupt, but Donovan didn’t need to know that.
“That’s right, McAllen.” Donovan sneered, satisfied with Wes’s silent submission. “Now listen closely because I’m not going to repeat myself, and I’d bet anything you’ll be pretty interested in what I have to say.”
Wes shifted against his captors but held on to his temper. Staring down the barrel of a gun had that kind of sobering effect.
“BRS has your righteous princess of a girlfriend,” announced Donovan, beaming. “Oh, she’s a piece of work, McAllen. I cannot possibly fathom what attraction you find in her. In any case, if you want to keep her alive, you’re coming with us. If not, well, who would really blame you?”
“You piece of shit,” spat Wes through the blood bubbling from his nose.
“I’ll take that as an acquiescence.” Donovan made a wrap-it-up gesture with his index finger to his four cohorts and handed the riot baton to Hastings. “You know the plan, boys. Knock him out, grab what we need, and move out the back door. Oh, and someone take care of that ugly, obnoxious dog.”
Without warning, the baton crashed into the side of Wes’s head. Dazed, he dropped to his knees. Another blow landed, this one to the base of his neck. He came to rest with his cheek pressed to the living-room carpet, observing the room from a blurry, incoherent angle. He spotted Franklin backing away from one of the other boys. Vaguely, Wes realized that someone was duct-taping his hands together behind his back. Conversation floated by like music notes on the wind, and Wes concentrated feebly through what was surely a massive concussion to catch the words.
“Leave a note… for that bitch to find…”
“Look at this shit she has from O’Connor!”
“Take it all… and leave the gun… can’t be caught with that.”
The blood from Wes’s broken nose dripped into the back of his throat. A fleeting thought fought through his muddled brain. He could die here, concussed and drowning in his own blood. Suddenly, he was lifted from the floor by his bound hands. The room swam, and Wes’s stomach roiled.
“Watch out, he’s going to hurl,” said a voice. Wes could no longer distinguish whose voice was whose.
“Get him outside.”
Wes’s feet dragged as he was hoisted between two of the boys and carried out through the back door of the apartment. When the sunshine found Wes’s face, he gave up trying to stay alert. It was much easier to succumb to the darkness. In his last moment of consciousness, he thought of Nicole.
Dear God, just let her be safe.
11
I leaned against the concrete wall of the drafty abandoned parking garage. It was freezing outside. A vast blanket of gray clouds obscured the sky. It would snow again soon, despite the fact that it was nearly April. Springtime in upstate New York was rarely cozy, but this year was unseasonably raw. Everywhere else saw fresh green buds on the trees and the beginnings of the season’s prettiest blooms, but the area around Waverly University’s intimate campus was just as dark and depressing as ever. It matched my mood. Tired and cold, I rewrapped the scarf around my neck to shield my chapped lips from the snappy wind that gusted through the garage. It was a miserable place to wait for someone, but the option to grab a steaming cup of cocoa and a table at the local Starbucks wasn’t exactly feasible. I had to stay out of the public eye. I was by no means a convict on the run or an undercover cop in the process of discovering
